Top 7 Tips to Spot a Toxic Employee in an Interview
Posted: Tue Jan 21, 2025 8:45 am
It would be good not to hire toxic employees at all, so as not to poison the atmosphere within the team. Before calling a candidate for an interview, you can study his resume more carefully. For example, frequent changes or too short terms of work in one place should alert the HR manager.
However, if the candidate seems suitable according to other criteria, you can invite him for an interview, but be sure to clarify this point in a personal conversation. Perhaps, due to certain circumstances, the person was forced to change his place of residence or simply worked on a piecework basis.
So, the person has come to the interview. Now the task is to ask the right questions and listen carefully to his answers. Here are some recommendations on what to ask the candidate to identify toxic ones at the interview stage.
What questions to ask a traffic manager at an interview
Ask about relationships within the team at your previous place of work
A toxic employee will not miss benefits of reaching overseas chinese consumers in europe an opportunity to complain. Everyone certainly took advantage of his gullibility, shifted their duties to him, which he carried out heroically, but they themselves did not really work.
This is, of course, an exaggeration, but there will always be hidden aggression in the response of a toxic person. It is better not to hire such employees, even if their track record is quite decent.
By the way, it is perfectly normal to get in response to this question that there were toxic employees at the previous place, which is why the candidate is at your interview. But this will be done quite tactfully, because it is very possible that he really did not work well with his former colleagues.
Ask about previous management
It is no secret that this question is always asked at interviews. It can sound different: "Why did you quit?", "Where did you work before?", etc.
If a candidate starts to speak badly about their previous boss, you are definitely dealing with a toxic person. Phrases like “He overwhelmed me with work” / “He made me work at night, on weekends and holidays” / “He never raised my salary” and so on in this spirit indicate that, first of all, the employee himself does not know how to plan his time and goals, and also has absolutely no control over his emotional state. You definitely do not need such a person in the team, because in a couple of months such a stream of complaints will flow in your direction.
An adequate person will say that the work was uninteresting, there was no opportunity to prove oneself, there was not enough creative space. The management will not scold, rather they will say that they are looking for new horizons, growth points, and from their previous place of work they brought many useful skills.
Ask about achievements and work in general
Also a mandatory question at the interview. It is important to analyze the candidate's answer correctly. As a rule, such a person will begin to assure that if it were not for him, the work of the department would have fallen apart, and the company where he worked would have ceased to exist. And he will definitely stop, because his brilliant ideas were neglected.
Pay attention to "we" and "I" . If a candidate for a position talks exclusively about personal achievements, without mentioning colleagues, this may indicate his excessive pride and egoism.
Ask about failures
Find out how the candidate behaved in difficult situations at his previous place of work? Toxic people usually choose the role of a victim, talking about other people's mistakes. They will blame others, trying to prove their own importance, they will never say that they may be wrong, but they learned a certain lesson from it. The danger is that they will behave exactly the same at their new place of work.
However, if the candidate seems suitable according to other criteria, you can invite him for an interview, but be sure to clarify this point in a personal conversation. Perhaps, due to certain circumstances, the person was forced to change his place of residence or simply worked on a piecework basis.
So, the person has come to the interview. Now the task is to ask the right questions and listen carefully to his answers. Here are some recommendations on what to ask the candidate to identify toxic ones at the interview stage.
What questions to ask a traffic manager at an interview
Ask about relationships within the team at your previous place of work
A toxic employee will not miss benefits of reaching overseas chinese consumers in europe an opportunity to complain. Everyone certainly took advantage of his gullibility, shifted their duties to him, which he carried out heroically, but they themselves did not really work.
This is, of course, an exaggeration, but there will always be hidden aggression in the response of a toxic person. It is better not to hire such employees, even if their track record is quite decent.
By the way, it is perfectly normal to get in response to this question that there were toxic employees at the previous place, which is why the candidate is at your interview. But this will be done quite tactfully, because it is very possible that he really did not work well with his former colleagues.
Ask about previous management
It is no secret that this question is always asked at interviews. It can sound different: "Why did you quit?", "Where did you work before?", etc.
If a candidate starts to speak badly about their previous boss, you are definitely dealing with a toxic person. Phrases like “He overwhelmed me with work” / “He made me work at night, on weekends and holidays” / “He never raised my salary” and so on in this spirit indicate that, first of all, the employee himself does not know how to plan his time and goals, and also has absolutely no control over his emotional state. You definitely do not need such a person in the team, because in a couple of months such a stream of complaints will flow in your direction.
An adequate person will say that the work was uninteresting, there was no opportunity to prove oneself, there was not enough creative space. The management will not scold, rather they will say that they are looking for new horizons, growth points, and from their previous place of work they brought many useful skills.
Ask about achievements and work in general
Also a mandatory question at the interview. It is important to analyze the candidate's answer correctly. As a rule, such a person will begin to assure that if it were not for him, the work of the department would have fallen apart, and the company where he worked would have ceased to exist. And he will definitely stop, because his brilliant ideas were neglected.
Pay attention to "we" and "I" . If a candidate for a position talks exclusively about personal achievements, without mentioning colleagues, this may indicate his excessive pride and egoism.
Ask about failures
Find out how the candidate behaved in difficult situations at his previous place of work? Toxic people usually choose the role of a victim, talking about other people's mistakes. They will blame others, trying to prove their own importance, they will never say that they may be wrong, but they learned a certain lesson from it. The danger is that they will behave exactly the same at their new place of work.